Broke camp at Guitar Lake at 4:00 a.m. We had the summit to ourselves as the sun rose over Owens Valley below. Exciting finish to an amazing 3 week backpack from Yosemite Valley. Stumbled down to Whitney Portal against what seemed like the entire city of Los Angeles coming up the trail.

Day hiked it in 12 hours. My crampons fell off my pack on the way up. My friend glisaded down from the summit, while I hiked the trail looking for the crampons, but never found them. Awesome day. Stayed in Lone Pine then went to Death Valley the next day. Not much to see there.

Lucked out on weather and conditions, despite the fires burning 100 miles up the road all over Yosemite. The day before our hike, smoke covered the high Sierras and towns below. However, it cleared and we had beautiful weather and conditions hiking to the tallest point in the lower 48 states! I loved Mt Whitney!

This hike made my 13th 14er but first in California. The weather was great, but the trail is long and tiring even in 2 days. Spent the night in the summit hut and got AMS. Definitely doing a technical route if I go back because the trail is boring.

While resting back at the family campground 13 hours after my first ever ascent and summit of Whitney earlier that windy morning, I got the idea to give it a 2nd go, solo at night. At 10:27 pm I started back up the trailhead from the portal hiking mostly by moonlight. Coming up the lower switches, I started looking left and exploiting the smooth and steep granite slabs that ran parallel to the creek. At the lower meadow, I went hikers left past the waterfall and staight up through a rapidly inclining granite boulder field, gaining the elevation up to the main trail camp. These granite boulders were magnificent large shiny quartz filled obstacles that required faithful dynamic moves to stay on time and keep moving over some distance. The quartz chips within this granite emited an incredible refelctive glow under moonlight. This field eventually threads into the glacial morains carved through bedrock that leads back right and up into the main trail camp. Above the switchbacks, there was virtually no wind unlike earlier that day when it was 60+ consistent. I reached the summit a few minutes before 3:00 am, bagged the first summit entry of the day and wrote a few notes as I took in the moonlight silhouettes of the surrounding view. After about :10 mins, I was booking hastily back down towards the trail crest. In good time, I was looking back down onto the first riser's coming up from camp. The pain of muscle fatigue from the earlier climb had been replaced with an aching in my feet as I duplicated the day's earlier 6,000 ft descent down the rocky trial. There with my summit log I snatched as a souvenier, I arrived back at camp. I dove back into my tent for an hour of sleep before my party woke to pack and leave, and I would tell them about the night's adventure.

Holy cow! I thought this was gonna be like a day at Disneyland, but I had so much fun! If you wanna have a party AND be in the mountains, do this trail! Everyone is so stoked to be out there and the vibe is awesome!